Pecan nut meat often contains the larvae of the pecan weevil, curculio caryae (Horn). This larvae has very similar color characteristics as the small pecan nut meat fragments and optical techniques for automatic separation are not sufficient. Present procedures for separating this larvae involve visual inspection of the nut meat in a dark room under ultraviolet light and in a lighted room under flourescent light, and picking out the larvae by hand. This is a very tedious and boring task. The labor cost is not only excessive, but efficiency is also poor because only a slight distraction of the inspector allows enough larvae to be missed as requires passing the pecan meat through inspection for the second time.
Although floatation techniques are widely practised in the pecan industry for the separation of fragments of the hulls, stones and other debris from the pecan meat, it is not heretofore been considered possible to effect the floatation separation of pecan nut meat from the larvae.